


Rewrite the Stars

by pitchblackkoi



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, but not like explicit, star-crossed lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 06:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16192166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pitchblackkoi/pseuds/pitchblackkoi
Summary: Ever since Juno met Peter Nureyev he has been having these dreams. In the dreams he and Nureyev are parts of different stories but still in love. But the idea that he is being reincarnated time after time with his star-crossed lover is crazy, right? It can't be real.





	Rewrite the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [only heaven I'll be sent to](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13032258) by [goodxgirl92](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodxgirl92/pseuds/goodxgirl92). 



> Thank you to Bert, who read "the only heaven I'll be sent to" after I recommended it and then yelled "Where's the rest of it?" This is my attempt at "the rest of it," as short as it is. Title from the song "Rewrite the Stars" from the Greatest Showman because it is a jupeter song in a way that makes me incredibly sad.

From the beginning there is something familiar about Peter Nureyev. 

Juno writes it off initially. Figures it is just intuition or something. Intuition telling him that he should trust him. Intuition telling him the man will have his back. Intuition telling him the name given to him is not quite right. And, eventually, intuition telling him that the name on the note is his true name.

That is all fine and good until the dreams start.

He has the first on the night after the mask case. When he wakes he can barely remember it. All that is left is the image of stark white wings and golden light. This goes on for months. He collects these snippets, hoards the good moments that differ so much from the nightmares he has always been plagued with. Together they begin to tell a story, the story of a man with huge white wings that glowed with otherworldly light. A man who said his name with such reverence and love. A man who looks too close to Peter Nureyev for comfort. 

He writes this off, too. Even when Nureyev waltzes back into his life, inviting him on a heist and buying him a nice suit and offering to help him save the planet. And then after, when everything goes wrong and Miasma imprisons and experiments on him. Even when hearing Nureyev get electrocuted chills him to the bone, familiar in the worst possible way, he ignores the feeling.

The dreams stop then. As it turns out, blacking out from exhaustion and blood loss is very different from sleeping. Juno wakes up more often than not with his head in Nureyev’s lap. He always looks so worried. Sometimes he is in the process of wiping blood off of Juno’s face. More often than not, though, he is simply holding him. It, too, feels strangely familiar.

The next dream Juno has is after everything. After Miasma. After he tries to sacrifice his life. After he loses an eye. It is in the hotel room, after everything, laying next to Peter.

In the dream he is being yelled at by a man he knows as his husband. He is arguing back, as stubborn as he is in life. Then he is attacked by the man, defending the angel who looks like Peter Nureyev. He is in such incredible pain, but it is worth it because he cannot let anything happen to his angel. But then the angel gets up to help Juno and it is over. He is hit with electricity and dies, right there in Juno’s arms.

Juno wakes with a start and looks over at Peter. He is still fast asleep. Juno  _ knows _ that he is asleep, but he cannot escape the image of the man dead in his arms that is burned into his mind’s eye. He figures the dream was his subconscious reminding him of just how easy it is to lose someone. That he is not meant for good things like Peter Nureyev. The promise and future that he represents.

So he leaves. He walks right out of that hotel room and regrets it as soon as the door is closed behind him. 

 

The next six months are less than ideal. 

That is a major understatement, actually, because the next six months are some of the worst he has had in near a decade. Juno drinks and sulks and does not solve cases. And at night he is faced with dreams of Peter Nureyev. Peter Nureyev looking at him lovingly. Peter Nureyev holding him closely. Peter Nureyev looking beautiful with huge white wings and a smile meant just for him. Peter Nureyev dying in his arms. 

Juno is not always a goddess and Nureyev is not always an angel. Sometimes they are soldiers on opposite sides of a battle. Sometimes they are royalty in warring nations. Sometimes one or the other is married to someone else. Sometimes the only problem is that they are both queer in a society that does not accept that. What stays the same, though, is that they only get a few tender moments together before they are ripped from each other. One of them usually dies first, in the arms of the other. Sometimes executed in the others presence. But they always die.

The dreams are so realistic that they almost feel like memories. There is a moment he begins to think they are, after a dream where he yells at the god of death to bring back his lover and then walks into the River Lethe to be reincarnated. He dismisses the idea as soon as he has it because while his life is weird, the idea of being reincarnated with his star-crossed soulmate is completely ridiculous.

It is maybe a week and a half after that dream when it happens. 

“It” is this: Peter Nureyev, on the floor of his apartment, bleeding profusely from a wound in his abdomen. His skin is ghostly pale as he smiles serenely up at Juno.

“I’m sorry for the intrusion,” he says through gasping breaths, eyelids barely open enough to look at him. “I just wanted to see you one last time.”

Juno’s first traitorous thought is  _ Not again _ . He cannot watch this man bleed out in his arms again. The image literally haunts his dreams and he does not know what he would do with himself if he watched another person die on his watch.

“Nonononono,” Juno mutters, trying to find out what exactly is wrong with Nureyev. His hands scramble in his panic (not least of which because that is a lot of blood and that has never been something he is comfortable with) until he finds it: a clean stab wound on his left side. “Nureyev, you have to stay with me. I have to get you to a hospital,  _ please _ .”

Nureyev lifts a bloodied hand to weakly cradle the side of Juno’s face. “No hospital. Please, Juno. I am in no state to hide my identity. If Brahma were to track me down I would be better off dead.”

The worst part is that Juno knows he is right. When he was in Nureyev’s head he saw how dangerous Brahma was. He knows the stakes. It does not mean he has to like it.

“Don’t cry,” Nureyev says softly, wiping a tear from his cheek. “I think this is how it was meant to be. I only wish we had more time.”

“No,” Juno says fiercely, fishing out his coms. “It will not end like this.”

The  _ not again _ remains unsaid, but hangs in the air.

“Rita,” he barks into his coms. “Remember that doctor who owes me a favor?”

“Dr. D’Eathe?” Rita asks. He can hear her take a deep breath to ask another question and he cuts her off before she can start.

“Call him and send him over to my apartment right now,” Juno states before hanging up.

It takes the doctor fifteen minutes to get there. By that time Juno is desperately pressing an old t-shirt to the torso of an unconscious Peter Nureyev. 

“Please,” is the only thing that Juno can manage to get out, voice hoarse and broken.

Dr. D’Eathe gets straight to work. It takes time and Juno is an the edge of a panic attack the entire time. In the end Juno is told that he is lucky the wound had not hit any organs, or there would have been nothing the doctor could have done without the help of a hospital. Nureyev is stitched up and given a blood transfusion and Juno is given specific instructions on how to care for him and told to contact the doctor if there are any problems.

Then the doctor leaves and Juno is left alone with an unconscious Peter Nureyev.

 

It is almost a day before Nureyev wakes the first time. Juno is sat in a chair he dragged next to the bed, where he has been since he finished showering and changing, staring blankly at his hands when he hears the injured man stir with a groan. 

Juno is on his feet in an instant, leaning over the other man, a worried expression covering his face. 

“Mmm, Juno?” Nureyev asks, eyes barely open enough to squint up at him. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” he replies softly.

“What happened?” His mouth is twisted downward as if trying to remember, a hand snaking to the wound in his side. 

Juno lightly grips his wrist. “Don’t mess with the stitches. A doctor owed me a favor but I don’t know if he would be too keen on coming back if you popped your stitches.”

Nureyev looks up at him at that, eyebrows scrunched together. “You saved me,” he states simply. 

“I mean  _ I _ didn’t. I just tried to slow the bleeding until the doctor could get here,” the detective says in a rush. 

Nureyev shakes his head. “I showed up here unannounced, bleeding. You didn’t have to do anything. Your actions saved me, Juno.”

“Did you really think I would let you die?” he asks, wounded. 

“I wasn’t sure,” the thief answers honestly. 

And that hurts. The idea that Peter Nureyev was unsure if Juno would save him but came to see him anyways. He thought he was going to die but he came to see him one last time. 

“I may have left,” Juno grits out, needing to be more honest than he is comfortable with. Needing to earn the way this man is looking at him. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”

Nureyev lifts a hand to wipe a stray tear from his cheek. “That’s good to hear, Juno. I’m glad.”

They sit there for a while, Nureyev laying down with a hand on Juno’s cheek and Juno leaned over him, head bowed, both taking comfort in each other’s presence. Eventually, Nureyev falls asleep again and that is that. 

 

The next few days are filled with much of the same. Nureyev rests while Juno takes care of things around the apartment, cooking and cleaning so that he has something to do with his hands. He feels more productive that he has in years, if he’s being honest with himself. 

Eventually Nureyev is feeling well enough to get up and move around. He showers, eats at the table, and sits with Juno on the couch, watching mindless streams together. 

It is on one such night Juno finally asks what has been on his mind since Nureyev went unconscious. 

“What did you mean when you said you thought this was ‘how it was meant to be?’” he asks. 

Nureyev freezes, the bland, lazy smile he had been wearing fading. He licks his lips before speaking. 

“I have been having these… dreams, for months now. In them we are together, but not as we are now.” He laughs stiffly. “In the most frequent ones I am an angel and you are a goddess, your namesake. We are together and then we die. Sometimes you die, sometimes I die, but we always die.

“They are vivid, like memories. That is the reason I said what I did. They feel so real I’ve begun to believe that they might be. So when I was bleeding out on your floor I thought, well, maybe it was better me than you,” he finishes.

Juno’s mouth goes completely dry as he stares open-mouthed at the man next to him. It couldn’t be. This could not be real. 

“I know it’s somewhat outlandish but-“ Peter starts, but Juno quickly cuts him off. 

“I have them, too. Ever since we met.” The thief’s eyes widen as Juno continues. “That’s- they’re why I left. That night I dreamt that you died and, god, I couldn’t lose anyone else so I left, thought it might save you somehow-“

He watches as tears begin streaming down Peter’s face as he whispers, “I found you. I found you.” 

Juno does not know what to say, which might be for the better because Peter loops his arms around his shoulders and holds him tightly. 

“I knew it was real,” the thief whispers into his ear. 

Juno grips him right back, digging his fingers into Peter’s shirt as if letting go means he will lose him forever. “It is. You found me. We found each other.”

In that moment Juno knows that he will never willingly let the other man go. Whatever it takes, he will fight for Peter Nureyev. Even if he dies again, it will be worth it.


End file.
